Internet Navigation Project

This project corresponds to health effects of exercise and physical activity and requires you to research a Centers for Disease Control national dataset to collect and interpret relevant physical activity (exposure) and outcome information (disease prevalence, economic cost of disease, morbidity and mortality statistics).

Goal: Understanding the data by using online resources like CDC Behavioral Risk Factor surveillance website to underscore the magnitude of the obesity problem and why physical activity is so important to health. You will be reporting prevalence rates for two topics: Physical Activity and Obesity.

TOPIC ONE: PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

1. Search the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) link ( http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html ) and look to the “Explore BRFSS data by topic section. In the “Class” area choose: Physical Activity

2. For the topic select: Physical Activity

3. Choose one year at a time. Select the years of your choice. You will report on two different years (the larger the gap between the years the better). In the “question” link choose: Adults with 30+ minutes of moderate activity five or more days per week (Do not select 20+ minutes question).

4. For each year report the following below:Then select “no” for the response

1. For each of the two years choose two qualifiers to report on: Gender, Age group, Race/Ethnicity, Education, Household income. These are selected by clicking on the “view by” tab.

5. Then report the crude prevalence for each category (there will be four displayed) shown. Tell the reader the percentages for each category and what states specifically correspond to each category.

TOPIC TWO: BMI CATEGORIES

1. Search the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) link ( http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html ) and look to the “Explore BRFSS data by topic section. In the “Class” area choose: Overweight and obesity

2. For the topic select: BMI categories

3. In the “question” link choose the only question to select – Weight classification of BMI

4. Select the same two years you reported on for physical activity. (Remember, the larger the gap between the years the better). For each year report the following below:Then for the response select “Obese (BMI 30.0 – 99.8)”

1. For each of the two years choose two qualifiers to report on: Gender, Age group, Race/Ethnicity, Education, Household income.

5. Then report the crude prevalence for each category (there will be four displayed) shown. Tell the reader the percentages for each category and what states specifically correspond to each category.

Lastly, tell the reader how how the physical activity data correlate with the obesity/BMI data you found? What do the trend data suggest? How do you interpret these data? What does this mean for public health practitioners? Where should our programs focus in the future?